📣 ESWA has submitted comprehensive feedback for the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2026-2030, to ensure sex workers' rights are at the core of future EU Gender Equality policies!
This feedback was compiled by ESWA’s Senior Policy Officer, Irena Ferčíková Konečná, drawing on ESWA’s community-led research and resources that were developed with the meaningful leadership and engagement of sex workers.
The feedback highlights urgent areas for the EU Gender Equality Strategy:
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An intersectional, anti-racist lens is vital for the EU Gender Equality Strategy. Sex workers face multiple, intersecting discriminations based on gender, class, race, migration status, and sexuality, amplifying their vulnerability to violence, economic hardship, and exclusion from health and political life. Policies must adopt this approach to address structural inequalities and achieve transformative justice.
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Combating gender-based violence rooted in stigma and harmful stereotypes sex workers face, advocating for a consent-based definition of rape, and addressing institutional violence against sex workers.
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Ensuring non-discriminatory access to health, including SRHR, free from stigma in healthcare settings, and aligning with WHO and UNAIDS guidance that recognises sex workers as a key population.
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Promoting economic empowerment by addressing labour market discrimination, recognising the link between economic inequality and sex work, and ensuring that online sex workers are protected under the Platform Work Directive and Digital Services Act (DSA).
- Dismantling profound barriers to political participation, tackling digital discrimination and algorithmic censorship (as seen with ESWA's own Instagram suspension), and securing unbiased funding for sex worker-led organisations, particularly in programmes like CERV.
Sex workers are human rights defenders who must be meaningfully included in all policy-making that affects their lives. We urge the EU to adopt an intersectional, anti-racist lens and champion transformative justice to address the structural inequalities sex workers face.
Read the document here and join us in advocating for a truly inclusive Gender Equality Strategy!
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Your support means the world to us!
